Rollercoaster (TV series)

RollerCoaster is a children's television show which was broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from between January 2005 and January 2010. Hosted by Elliot Spencer, it was aimed at an older audience than that for ABC For Kids. RollerCoaster was a "wrapper" show, usually incorporating three to five externally produced animated programs (formerly a mix of animated and live action shows) of varying lengths, which were interspersed with locally produced studio or location segments hosted by Spencer. It was aimed at older children and young teenaged audiences. The host, Elliot Spencer was usually the sole presenter, dressing up as characters for short sketches sometimes; on occasion members of Rollercoaster crew also appear in gags and sketches. The show also included regular features jointly presented by Spencer and Ruben Meerman, "The Surfing Scientist". Rollercoaster followed a well established format for Australian children's television. In order to comply with government mandated Australian content regulations, local broadcasters have traditionally engaged a local presenter or team of presenters to "wrap" (or "top and tail") pre produced segments such as cartoons. These shows offer a relatively inexpensive means of filling children's viewing times on Australian TV—the wrapper segments are generally made with a small crew and feature minimal production values; in the early days of Australian television the wrapper segments were performed live, although today they are now usually pre recorded. The outsourced content is often purchased at relatively low cost, and for many decades Australian networks have been offered package deal rates by American production houses and networks, as an incentive to purchase bundled content. The 'outsourced' segments of the show were most commonly short animated series. Many of these programs are produced outside Australia with most sourced from other English speaking countries, chiefly the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. RollerCoaster alternates these short programs (e. g. Shaun the Sheep, The Mr. Men Show) with longer animated or live action children's programs in a variety of genres, such as Roman Mysteries, Wolverine and the X Men, Naturally Sadie, 6Teen, Carl Squared, Atomic Betty, Young Dracula, Lizzie Mcguire, Even Stevens, Zoey 101, The Fairly Oddparents, Silversun. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Round the Twist and more recently, the children's reality competition Escape from Scorpion Island. Such programs are usually produced for American or Canadian commercial or cable TV and are structured to allow the insertion of advertising breaks, so they have a slightly shorter running time on RollerCoaster, since the ABC carries no external advertising. The locally produced portions of RollerCoaster featuring Spencer featured a number of recurring segments including: "Fetch", "Feed Me", "Now Poll", "MEE News", and "The Surfing Scientist" and "Professor Slo and Doctor Mo". Many of these segments included elements of audience participation or contributions via email or the RollerCoaster website's moderated chat rooms and message boards. On 30 January 2010, Elliot Spencer announced he was leaving the show after five years of hosting, the ABC decided not to replace him and end the show completely. The show has been succeeded by Studio 3.

The series began in January 2005, filling a slot once occupied by The Afternoon Show. It broke over the Australian summer school holidays and was replaced by a special Christmas line up. During the holidays there were generally three or four popular shows repeated every day, rather than interchanging every day. Sometimes instead of the usual three or four shows a 'special' would be shown. These included 'double episodes' of Degrassi: The Next Generation and the Edgar and Ellen Specials. Wallace and Gromit stop motion animation movies were shown as well. Each year, the last week of Rollercoaster would air Christmas related programmes or holiday themed episodes of series which have aired on the show previously.

Graphics for the studio segments are produced using Chroma key or green screen technology. This means many gags, information segments, and backgrounds, can be used and changed quickly. Props are kept to a minimum, like in the Feed Me segment where a preparation table and mixing bowl are used, or in Chatter and other segments where a retro style yellow table appears, now a Rollercoaster signed table with green and black stripes on the front and a storage on the back.

From Monday 19 June 2006, Rollercoaster Rewind began on ABC1 in early weekday mornings, the show repeated the programming from four months earlier in reverse order originally until from 9 July 2007, where this was changed so that the programmes were aired in the correct order, though later again reverted to reverse order. Because Rollercoaster Rewind runs in the non ratings season and the regular show does not, in early 2008 Rollercoaster Rewind caught up to the current broadcast of Rollercoaster, resulting in the ABC replacing their early morning programming by other series until 'Rewind' resumed from where it left off. On Friday 21 December 2007, the last show of RollerCoaster aired for that year, returning on Monday 25 February 2008 for its first show of the new year.

From 2 March 2009, the show moved from its previous time slot of 5:00–6:00 p. m. AEST, and moved down an hour earlier, from 4:00–5:00 p. m The presentation also changed to filming in a real set in contrast to previously, where they would film in front of a green screen with closed captions. It remained a wrapper program, and the segments remained the same, however the programs were no longer interchanged, and each day featured the same line up of shows. Another change was that it only included animation now, with live action shows not "boxed" by the Rollercoaster format and were seen following in the 5pm 6pm slot.

At the end of the Friday 29 January 2010 edition, Spencer announced that he was leaving the show and thanked viewers for his five years as presenter and writer of the series. By the same date, the main Rollercoaster URL was redirecting visitors to the new ABC3 website; some pages including "Elliot's Blah" still function, though now carry the disclaimer that they are no long being updated as well as a link redirecting visitors to a new Rollercoaster section in the ABC3 site. Elliot sang a song entitled "Bye for now, not forever!" and explained "it was a good five years".

"Rollercoaster" is also the name of the show's website, which was created a few years previous to the show itself and features the phrase 'Rhymes with toaster'. The website itself was advertised as 'Rollercoaster' on the current timeslot taken by the show for a couple of years before the show began. The website features articles on shows and games and other entertainment related to shows or the general youth genre. This site is also where polls, voting, feedback and other interactive content could be submitted.